Robi Botos

Budapest, Hungary • 1990s

In the early Budapest daylight, Robi Botos walked his stepdaughter to school, and as he walked, he listened. He had trained his ear for the sound of loud speakers echoing from the city’s public squares which almost always signaled a gathering of neo-Nazi demonstrators. Jews are stealing Hungary, Gypsies are making it criminal. If he heard the sound, and careful to keep chatting to his stepdaughter, Robi would veer away from the square and down another street, an indirect route, but clear of the men in black jackets with sewn-on swastikas.